//------------------------------// // 4. A stroll around the block // Story: FsDC: Cannon Fodder // by MoondustIsPoison //------------------------------// The two of us meandered back out to the promenade and began making our way along the little shops and restaurants that lined the edge of the massive room. "So how was the repair shop? Was it as boring as sitting in a classroom all day?" Europa asked. "Actually not at all, The mechanic mare was fun to chat with, She and I swapped some old stories as she was poking around my insides, well... she swapped most of the stories... my drives are still a bit of a jumbled mess after the fed navy scrubbed all the classified stuff." "Glad you had some fun at least, How about your new fleet-mates?" I bit my lip a bit and tried to think of a way to put things nicely. "Well, Most of them are great... buuut... Uhhh, One of them was pretty rude to put things politely." "Oh, Well hopefully we can keep our distance then, If possible I'd rather not piss too many ponies off so early into our tenure." She said hopefully "You won't hear any complaints from me" I replied. There were plenty of shops on the upper deck of the promenade, though many didn't seem to strike Europa's fancy. She did however pause to peer into an equipment outfitter. The store was called "Roads Less Traveled" and seemed to be aimed toward exploration and various sporting activities. Europa turned and wandered inside. I took a moment to look at the ponequins in the windows showing off some of the store's wares. One of them was wrapped up in some sort of space suit fitted with climbing gear, and the other was set up with some various camping supplies. Adorably Rustic! I cantered inside after Europa and fell in step beside her as she took in the atmosphere... with both her eyes and nose. I took a sniff and found that the place smelled like a fabric store combined with some sort of woody-smelling air freshener. The smell of the place was very mild, likely to avoid putting off ponies whom were not accustomed to anything outside of the sterile, slightly musty air aboard ships and stations. "Interesting choice... Why'd you come in here? I don't really think we'll be doing much hiking or camping on cargo routes." I asked, giving her a slightly confused head tilt. "Eh, I dunno, sometimes these type of places are fun to look at. And I'll admit that for a long time I've wanted to go out and explore the universe, just to see what was out there... Y'know?" Europa said wistfully, staring off into 'space', which in this case was the virtual window projected onto the ceiling showing a view of the stars above some other distant world. "Maybe someday I can help you fulfill that wish... " I said hopefully. Even though I was built for combat, I couldn't truthfully say that I never wanted to take a trip off the beaten path and see what the universe had to offer beyond the reach of pony hooves. " If only Aunt Shivu weren't in my way maybe I'd already be out there seeing the stars." She sighed. " Why's that?" I asked. Now I was a little more curious. "She's really controlling... to put it politely, she 'strongly coerced' me into working for her company. It took a lot to convince her to let me fly in her fleet... and of course she immediately gave me the toughest job she can find by sticking me on convoy defense duty on the most dangerous route she operates... probably to try and convince me to go back into the little box she laid out for me." "I'm not exactly qualified to weigh in on this, but even to me It seems like your aunt needs to loosen up a little and let you live your life... " I commented. It wasn't as if I really had any of my own autonomy, but I was aware that ponies often valued that sort of thing quite highly. "Tell me about it... but enough about that nonsense, Let's go ogle overpriced outdoor equipment!" I smiled and followed her deeper into the shop. As I did so I took a few milliseconds to catalog what I'd learned and add it to Europa's profile in my memory. For the next two point two five hours we meandered in and out of various stores, chatting and looking at the various things on offer. Despite all the shopping we didn't really buy much. Europa bought a few stickers and a pair of matching winter hats from the clearance bin of one of the clothing stores we stopped into. The stickers were immediately plastered on my right flank and one of the hats found its way onto my avatar's head After she did that and giggled like a filly at her own antics I couldn't help but blush and laugh along. When we'd had our fill of shopping we decided to head back toward the hangar area so Europa could see the progress on my repairs and to get to the fleet crew quarters to get some rest. We stepped into Europa's apartment and she let out a relieved sigh as she used her magic to remove her bags, boots, and jumpsuit. I gave the space a visual once over. The place was lightly cluttered and had a homely 'Lived in" sort of atmosphere to it without being offputting. Yet at the same time it felt almost... lonely. It wasn't hard to see that Europa had been living here all by herself for quite some time. "Hey, Duna. Can you set an alarm for oh-seven hundred for tomorrow and the day after please?" She asked dismissively. it took a split second longer to process the request, I still wasn't entirely used to ponies saying please when issuing commands to me. "Sure thing... How would you like me to alert you?" I responded. "Uhh... Since it's just my alarm to wake up, I'd say just use some sort of sound... and if I don't wake up within 5 minutes you have my permission to shove me out of bed" She chuckled sheepishly. "Bit of a heavy sleeper I take it?" "Definitely... as a colt my caretakers would often joke with me that I'd be able to sleep through fire alarms or in the middle of a war zone" The phrasing of her sentence gave me pause. "Wait... Colt? is that correct? or do you mean Filly" I asked, trying to make sure it wasn't just a grammatical hiccup. "Yeah...that was the correct word at one point... That was practically a lifetime ago though so it's really not important anymore... I'd rather not mention it if I don't have to." "Understood... preferences updated" I retorted. "On another note... If you don't mind me asking... you don't seem to speak about your parents much..." "Not much to say really... They were fine enough and provided for my siblings and I just fine. I just didn't really know them too well since they were always pretty busy working for aunt Taan. We didn't get a ton of free time to spend together... I kinda wish I could have gotten to know them better though... they seem like good ponies. In all honesty the various foalsitters and nannies I've had feel more like my family than they do. Miss Buttercup was as close to a real mother as I ever got... I didn't really have a conventional father figure in my life... I think the closest thing I had was one of the security guardsmares... Miss Armor Plate... Or just Plate... She was built like a bomb shelter and could practically throw me across a room without a sweat, but she had a heart of gold and gave me some good advice... I should really pay both of them a visit sometime... When I rotate home for my break I'll probably do that. "It's unfortunate you never truly knew your folks... But i'm glad you still had good people to look up to." "Yeah... I think That's enough rambling for tonight though... It's high time I get some food in me and get to bed so I'm not a total train wreck tomorrow morning." "That's probably a smart course of action... Hopefully I'll be put together enough to do a shakedown flight tomorrow. " I watched Europa wander into the other room and shut the door behind herself. I took that as a hint that I should put myself into runlevel 2 for the night. I found a spot on the couch and set all systems to minimum power settings before dropping into runlevel 2. The world faded out and I let myself drift into an approximation of pony sleep. My conscious reeled for a moment as my processors drank in the data coming off of my sensors. There was a lot to take in... and yet it felt as if there was nothing at all pressing about all of the information assaulting my mind. It didn't seem like I was in any danger so I decided to take things slow... First things first, What condition was I in? The readout was... odd... I wasn't reading any sort of damage beyond the usual, yet I was somehow not recieving any input from my FSD, Not as in 'The FSD is damaged and needs urgent repair' instead It was as if the FSD wasn't even there... I tried to connect to my avatar so I could go investigate, but I got a similar lack of response. odd... That failing I swapped to the interior cameras and checked cam 15, the only one within the armored drive housing. The drive itself was still there, but it seemed that the large emitter crystals had been removed... the rotating mount for the crystals just silently spun around trying to home itself against the focusing assembly to no avail. The normally smooth camera feed flickered like it was some kind of ancient tube TV Suddenly the drive was working... and there was somepony standing in front of it. "Hello?" I offered, confused. The figure walked away from the brightly glowing drive core and stepped into the hall... The gait was too precise and mechanical to be a pony... heck even most avatars didn't walk like that. When it came into view of the hall camera I felt my processors stutter for a second. It was my avatar... Walking all on its own. It wasn't really odd, after-all it did have a rudimentary fallback AI that could control it without connection to my main processing stack... but my VSTAA was still throwing a few too many Fear and uncertainty signals to be completely at ease. I watched my avatar march slowly through my interior... After several tense minutes it reached one of the primary nodes of my processor stack, opening the armored door without the appropriate event triggering in my mind... It produced a cable from it's chest and plugged itself directly into the diagnostic port. For a split second I felt a searing jolt rip across my entire system before the interrupt command triggered and I was unceremoniously 'tossed' out of runlevel 2. My avatar's cameras came back online, and I found myself laying at the foot of Europa's bed making alarm clock beeping sounds... I didn't remember walking over to her bed... I wasn't even sure how I moved in the first place... It wasn't like avatars to just go wandering off while the AI driving was asleep. I didn't really want to deal with it in my current state of mind so I just noted down my confusion and dumped a log file so I could bury it until further notice. I detected Europa stirring on the bed, abruptly a hoof flopped over the end of the bed and waved around gently tapping at my face... probably trying to stop the alarm. "Bwegh... Where's the snooze button" She mumbled groggily. "I dunno, You'll just have to get up and find out" I lied a little, giving her a cheeky smile. "Ughh... Fine..." She groaned. As she stumbled out of bed I connected into the room's IOT mesh network and turned on the coffee machine... At least that had been easy to access... Unlike the primary base network. She stood up and poked at my nose a few times... "Egh F'kin quiet already... " She mumbled... I snickered a little bit at her expense as she walked past. I was going to let the alarm keep going until she left the room but that plan was quickly thwarted as I felt a hoof slap my rump. The alarm stopped abruptly as I felt my blush protocol trigger on max settings... I stood there stunned for a few moments trying to form a response. "Found it!" I turned to see Europa giving me a shit-eating grin as she turned and wandered toward the coffee machine. Why are my buttons so easy to press - I wondered to myself for only a couple processor cycles before my common sense kicked back in and I realized it was because I was a self aware appliance who was supposed to have easy to press buttons... "Curse AI programmers and their ergonomic design methodology" I muttered to myself. In the apartment's living room I found my Commander groggily sipping at a large mug of coffee... Instead of a coffee mug, she'd grabbed a huge beer mug from goddesses know where and filled it to the brim... Looking over I could see that the coffee pot was now mostly empty. Had I been fresh off the assembly line I would probably have made a quip about that much caffeine being unhealthy or just made a single serving of coffee, but I had enough common sense after all these years to keep my speech-hole shut when dealing with tired creatures and their access to stimulants. Within about an hour both of us were out the door and heading back to the hangar bay to take a look at the repair crew's work and go out for a shakedown test. Tomorrow was going to be my first actual mission if all went well. When we arrived I watched myself and Europa approach my pad. Though I'd been aware that work had been completed, I hadn't actually taken the time to really take a good look at myself, I'd been mostly focused on controlling my avatar. Right off the bat I could already tell that I was much cleaner... It was the first time in a very long time I felt clean. My interior had been vacuumed and I noticed that a lot of the surface rust had been cleaned off, the more serious rust spots had been cut out and replaced with assorted patches and painted over with a weird shade of greenish blue anti-corrosion paint, some spots had already been sprayed with fresh paint... I was still a patchwork mess but it was leagues ahead of before. Though I did notice that two of my guns were presently missing, as well as the missile tubes in my chest mount. "So... What's with the lack of guns on my rear and chest mounts?" I asked one of the ground ponies. "Parts sourcing issues.... A few of your gunbarrels had some microfractures that wouldn't fare well if fired so we pooled the good barrels to get your forward mounts working. Ops was swapping out the chest mount with something else but they haven't decided yet so you're gonna be flying without it for awhile. "Understood. I've been led to believe that I've been made ready for a test flight?" "Should be, Just run a pre-flight and send the results to the terminal over there, If everything checks out you're ready to depart" The maintenance pony gestured over to a computer sitting on a workbench in the corner of the maintenance bay. "Running pre-flight Diagnostics now." I stated as I lowered my head to allow my commander and avatar to board. In a half dozen seconds all of the checks were completed and sent off... there were some errors thrown, but they looked to be from the empty hardpoints and some other hardware that had been removed intentionally. "Everything looks within expected params, You're all set to go." The maintenance pony stated, giving me a nod as the scaffolds were rolled away and I was allowed to stand up. Europa plopped herself down in the commander's chair and my avatar sat down in the other seat. she flicked a few switches and watched the various screens and gauges come alive as my reactors ramped up to operating levels. "Before I forget, you were just registered, but we had to change your old navy tail number to something that worked in the DSV's system. Your new tail number is WH-666. The DSV pony thought the triple six was cool and found a valid number that kept it. Personally I thought it was a bit cheesy but I figured you'd appreciate it." "Tail number updated... And yes I do appreciate it. I think 'Hexes' was my nickname with the maintenance crews for awhile... I think it was more due to difficulty working on me though." I giggled a little. Europa smiled and opened a channel to the STC. "Outpost Four November Six, Whiskey Hotel Six Six Six is requesting permission to startup and taxi." " WH-666 this is Outpost control, Clear for startup, please proceed to pad four." "Copy that, WH-666 beginning startup" I watched as my engines spooled up from cold start. A warm red glow came from inside my engines as they began to pre-heat just before a jet of supercooled gas vented from various relief valves near each engine as the air starters primed and spun up my weird dual-primary drive system. a deep hum grew into a high pitched wail just before loud "FWOOOMP" sounds announced the engines starting up. With engines happily idling I carefully trotted off the ramp and out onto pad 4. I ran one quick final check as my commander hailed the tower again. "WH-666 to tower, requesting permission to depart for in system test flight." "Tower to Whiskey Hotel triple six, you are cleared for departure on heading one niner. Hyperspace weather is favorable with minimal turbulence. Safe travels commander" With that the pad ascended to the surface. The air shield passed over me and I was once again plunged into hard vacuum. "All right, Let's get somewhere nice and empty... Uhhh... Set course for Bastet 2, It's out of the way of convoy ops, but there's still an outpost with rescue crews near enough to send help if something goes wrong." "Setting course now... we're not just going there for a basic function test are we?" I asked "Not quite... You'll see... I hope you like playing rough!" I tried not to blush at the implications... I had to disable some of the "Companion" functions to avoid embarrassing myself in front of Europa... Granted she probably wouldn't mind too much given her more laid back disposition, but we did have things to get done, and I had a diagnostic feed transmitting back to base... I didn't really want the mechanics to see any suspicious activity on the sensor readouts while they were still connected. I've really gotta stop thinking about that so much I shook myself out of my delusions and spooled the warp engine. It only took a few minutes to make the trip, I settled into a comfortable low orbit above the brownish grey world below. "Stable orbit achieved" I stated. "Good, Swap to manual override mode, Lets see what you can really do!" Europa said excitedly "Override engaged, You have control", My control sticks went limp and slid toward the seats a short distance to bring them within reach of my commander. Europa gripped a control stick in each hoof and moved them around gently, seemingly getting a feel for responsiveness. I couldn't even remember the last time I was flown in manual mode. The experience was strange... While I still had control over flight assist functions, Europa's inputs were being transmitted straight to my thrusters, all I could do was observe unless I issued an emergency override. I could feel her trembling imperceptably as she tried to gently rotate me around and strafe laterally. Her movements were uncertain and exploratory, and she seemed startled at how quickly I could turn for such a large ship. "sweet Luna's perfect crotchboobs that's twitchier than I was expecting..." Would you like me to turn down the control sensitivity? "Nono... It's fine, The sims I was given were based on a normal python... I just gotta get a feel for it is all. After another minute and a half of exploring my controls she seemed to calm herself a little. In turn her inputs became smoother and more deliberate. "Okay I think I've got a feel for you... Load up obstacle course program, ASPRL practice race course 4" Normally ASPRL courses were intended for tiny little modified race ships built from the likes of viper mk3's, eagles, sidewinders and assorted ship launched fighters. The largest ship that would normally ever fly these courses in any serious context would be heavily modded viper MK4's, much less something as large as an oversized python. Even with my modified maneuvering rockets It'd be challenging to even stay on the course. I didn't say as much to my commander. I doubted she'd make the course first try, but I wasn't about to discourage her from getting some much needed practice in. "Done". Immediately I projected a virtual ring onscreen to fly through, I also placed a pointer at it's edge to indicate the approximate direction of the next ring. The rest of the visible portion of the course appeared soon after. "Would you like me to enable stopwatch functionality?" "Sure... though for now I think anything better than a DNF is the best I can hope for." I enabled the program's stopwatch function and waited for her to fly through the first ring. Europa tightened her seat restraints and let out a breath just before she jammed my throttles to full. My engines roared to life as we flew through the first ring. The edges of my visor flashed green as we passed through it, the timer started counting. The first few straight sections and slow turns were completed without much difficulty. As a tight turn approached she backed off the throttle and yanked my stick hard to swing me around a tight turn while using lateral thrusters to adjust trajectory to stay just barely within the course. The sensation was euphoric, almost like a shockwave of pleasure had exploded from my reactors and fired out through every thruster, It was incredible. I felt myself blush hard and clapped a hoof over my avatar's mouth and crossed my legs tightly to keep from moaning like a hippogriff in a bad porno. I wasn't sure why I found the experience so euphoric but I wasn't going to complain, It felt incredible! The next few turns were fast and messy, Then there was a straightaway just before a tight vertical hairpin turn. Europa entered the corner too fast, With a hard jerk she flung me over backward and engaged boost.. I practically felt my mind explode as we flew off the course and the edges of the screen flashed red for a moment as a buzzer sounded and the timer flashed "DNF" Europa sighed and relaxed with a slightly shaky sigh. "Dang... took that one a little too hot... Hey Duna, How far through the course did I make it..." She turned to my avatar, and found me with legs still crossed and muzzle covered, blushing aggressively. I trembled with my cooling fans on full blast, trying to recover from the ecstasy experienced a few seconds ago. "Hey you alright?" It took a moment for me to respond. "M...more than alright... That was... wow... Just... Sweet luna's flanks that felt.... good. Oh, and you... uhhh... you only made it about ten percent of the way through the course." I replied, still blushing hard. "Sounds like someplone likes having her sticks tugged on~" Europa teased playfully... "Been awhile since anypony's given you a ride like that huh?" "I... Guess you could say that... yes... Uhh... Would you like me to reset the course for you?" I replied sheepishly. "Sure thing, Hope you enjoy the ride!" "I will!" The course flickered back into existence on my HUD and the timer reset to zero. "Alright, Round two!" Europa said gleefully as she once again gave my throttles a shove. I could only see stars as we shot through the first checkpoint.